Insights, opinions and a point of view from a call center, contact center and customer experience consulting veteran related to call centers, contact centers, customer service and customer satisfaction based on 35+ years of industry knowledge and experience.

Monday, January 10, 2011

It always amazes me how call center managers, their direct supports and their superiors often fail to use one of the best tools at their disposal, Root Cause Analysis. Of course if you are always fighting fires it is difficult to find time and or resources to

research what is causing the fires in the first place. As with any fire there is always a cause; a discarded cigarette, an ignition source, lightening etc. There is always an underlying cause for any event.

According to Wikipedia, “Root cause analysis (RCA) is a term used to denote a class of problem solving methods aimed at identifying the root causes of problems or events. The practice of RCA is predicated on the belief that problems are best solved

by attempting to correct or eliminate root causes, as opposed to merely addressing the immediately obvious symptoms. By directing corrective measures at root causes, it is hoped that the likelihood of problem recurrence will be minimized. However, it

is recognized that complete prevention of recurrence by a single intervention is not always possible. Thus, RCA is often considered to be an iterative process, and is frequently viewed as a tool of continuous improvement”.

If we go to see our doctor we would rather that he addressed the cause of our sickness and not just the symptoms. In our business lives, however, we can often fail to see or understand the causal events that are making our lives miserable. So how can we move

from fighting the fires to preventing them? How can we do this without investing in expensive technology, costly consultants and with no additional resource bandwidth? The phrase “out of the mouth of babes” comes to mind. You see I have been practicing

root cause analysis for many years and had developed a fairly robust approach of employing process maps, live call monitors and recording as well as stakeholder interviews. All of which I must say has worked quite well and has stood me in good stead with

my clients and customers. When babysitting my granddaughter recently I was reminded of another approach and one that is extremely effective for drilling down to a root or underlying cause. “Why is the sky blue?, Why do we have day and nights?,

Why doesn’t the sun go out? Why does the moon move around the sky?, Why do the tides move in and out? Of course anyone who is familiar with six sigma understands the ‘5 whys’. Following my most recent interaction with my granddaughter I gained a new appreciation for this approach. Again from Wikipedia, “The 5 Whys is a technique used in six sigma methodology to help determine the root cause of a defect or problem. Often it takes roughly five iterations of asking why to get to the real cause of a problem, although the real key is to just start asking why” The penny dropped, using the 5 whys could be a far simpler tool for quickly assessing the root cause.

So we tried it out on one of our clients;

“41% of all callers were complaining that the service promised was not delivered”,

Oh says I “why would the service not be provided?”

“The customer must complete some preparation in order for us to provide the service. A lot of times they don’t prepare and blame it on us”

“So what percentage of the complaints are real and what percent is the customers?” I asked.

“I don’t know came the response, we don’t measure that”

“Ok, so I’ll ask, why don’t we measure that?”

“We don’t have a mandate from corporate to measure it”

“You said you didn’t have a mandate from corporate. Aren’t there service standards in place?”

“Well yes, there are, but complaints aren’t really covered.”

“Why aren’t complaints covered?” I asked gamely.

“The operations staff doesn’t want us to measure complaints.”

“And why don’t they want to measure complaints?”

“Because since some of the customers are lying it will make the operations staff looks bad and they don’t wish to be seen as doing a bad job”

At this point I had to agree I could see that point of view. After all who wants to look like they are doing a bad job? The operations staff also completed ten of thousands of service deliveries successfully each month. Though not wanting to bail out of the process, I adjusted course and went back at it, “You said there were service standards in place. Is there not a standard for service complaints?”

“There actually is, but we don’t report on it, because it just gets the operations staff upset. They tell us it is only a goal.”

“Ah ha! So these are service goals rather than service standards for complaints. So you don’t track them because a percentage of your customers may be lying. Do I understand this now?”

“Yes, actually you have put it quite well.”

There we have it. Not quite done in the suggested 5 why questions; but the underlying cause for the high percent of complaint calls is the lack of service standards. While management claimed to employ service standards in the case of complaints, they were really just goals. Therefore they were untracked and unenforceable. But maybe I am congratulating myself too quickly. Let’s fast forward a bit through the process:

We met with the senior management team and reviewed the service standards.

We found that many standards were really goals and most were not tracked or met.

We secured agreement that in order to have any effectiveness a service standard had to be tracked, analyzed and managed,

We secured agreement on all standards fairly quickly based upon a 5 nines success rate 99.999% success.

Then we bumped back into the problem with those lying customers. In all fairness it was not me who had the epiphany, but rather one of the senior group.

“So tell me” he asked “is your lying population concentrated in just one sales territory?”

The answer as suspected was “No they are all over town”,

“Good then why can’t we just accept that a percentage of our customers will be less than truthful, because I’m sure the liar density in this town, like others is pretty equally distributed”

Well that did it. We agreed to a meaningful service standard for complaints; accepted the truth that liars don’t all live on the same block. We moved forward and implemented meaningful service standards across the organization.

There were more than a few missteps along the way but at the end of the day we saw the number and percentage of total calls represented by complaints drop from 41% to less than 7%. Of course like any improvement initiative it never comes to an end. I know that today we are still working to improve the success rate for the service standards and we are still looking for those customers who are less than truthful.

A final thought if you ask the question as to why things are done a certain way and get the answer because we have always done it that way; don’t despair. There is always a better mousetrap, a better way of doing things. We just need to discover them. Root

Cause Analysis can be a very valuable tool is helping you to understand why.

About Me

More than 33 years of call and contact center experience. Worked in every position possible in the call/contact industry space. Recipient of more than 27 awards for call/contact center excellence. More than 14,000 agent desktops around the globe employ TRG designed operational models. CEO of The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. a call and contact center consultancy, past President & CEO of Watts Communications a large contact center outsource agency. Author, speaker and expert on all things call or contact center.
For more information visit http://www.thetaylorreachgroup.com